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Overview

The USB32VGAPRO USB 3.0 to VGA Adapter turns an available USB 3.0 port on your desktop or laptop into a VGA output, with high resolution 1920x1200/1080p video support - a convenient external video solution that makes it easy to add multi-monitor capability to a USB 3.0-enabled Mac® or PC (optimal performance from USB 3.0, backward compatible with USB 2.0).

Leveraging the high-bandwidth (5 Gbps) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, and powered by the DisplayLink chipset, the USB32VGAPRO is our highest performing USB to VGA adapter, delivering high-resolution content to your VGA-capable display. The external graphics card can be used to mirror your primary desktop, showing the same image on each display, or to extend your desktop to double your workspace and increase your productivity.

Applications

Add a secondary VGA display and extend your desktop without taking apart your computer to install a new video card

Add multi-monitor capability to a single computer, to create engaging multimedia presentations

Use the adapter to connect your PC to your VGA-equipped TV, for showing family pictures and movies

Great for researchers and writers, offering the ability to have reference material on one display and a working document copy on the other

Increase productivity by running multiple applications on different screens, check your e-mail on one display and search the web on the other

View a large spreadsheet or several individual spreadsheets across multiple displays

A compact, lightweight solution for traveling business associates using laptop PCs, enabling connection to a secondary display/projector

Technical Specifications

Product Numbers

Ingram Switzerland

V933036

UPC Code

065030854894

Warranty Information

Warranty

2 Years

Hardware

AV Input

USB 3.0

AV Output

VGA

Chipset ID

DisplayLink - DL-3100N

Memory

512MB DDR2 SDRAM

USB Pass-Through

No

Performance

General Specifications

This USB video adapter uses a DisplayLink family chipset. If you’re connecting this device to a computer along with additional USB video adapters or docking stations, please avoid using devices with a Trigger or Fresco family chipset.

Data Sheets

Frequently Asked Questions

Before You Buy

You may have heard of USB video adapters, and have been wondering what they are, and whether or not they will work in your setup.

USB video adapters are devices that take one USB port and go to one or many video connections, such as VGA, DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort. This is useful if you would like to add an additional display to your computer setup, but are out of video connections on your computer.

USB video adapters allow you to mirror or duplicate your display, so the same windows are shown on all of your displays, or extend your desktop, so that you can have different windows on each display.

Ensure that the USB video adapter is compatible with your operating system.

USB video adapters require your video card to be able to handle an additional display. This is because USB video adapters work with your onboard or dedicated video card to drive additional displays. For this reason you are advised to confirm this with your video card manufacturer.

Consider what you will be doing on the additional display. If you are looking to perform less graphically intensive activities like using Microsoft Office, email, or basic web surfing, you can use any USB video adapter. If you are looking to perform more graphically intensive activities like high end photo or video editing, you want a USB video adapter with dedicated memory.

There are a few other important things to note:

When using multiple USB video adapters on the same computer, they need to use the same chipset family. For example, MCT/Trigger, DisplayLink or Fresco. Note: How many adapters you can use depends on the SKU.

You may not be able to use a USB video adapter with an All-In-One computer. These computers are almost always hardwired to only accept a single display.

You may not be able to use a USB video adapter with a touchscreen computer or display. A mixture of touchscreen and non-touchscreen devices can conflict with the video card.

You should not use a USB video adapter to play video games. They are not designed for use with video games, and their performance with them is poor at best.

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You can use an external display or projector with a Mac notebook while its built-in display is closed. This is known as "clamshell" or "closed display" mode.

Clamshell mode requires that the following devices are connected to the Mac notebook:

A power adapter.

An external keyboard, mouse, or trackpad.

An external display.

macOS does not see DisplayLink displays as external displays, therefore this criteria is not met and clamshell mode cannot be enabled when a DisplayLink adapter is the only external display connected to the computer.

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Installation

Note: Do not physically connect the USB video adapter to your computer until you are instructed to (Step 5).

Prior to installing this device, make sure that your operating system is up to date (for example, you have installed the most recent service pack).

To install the driver:

Download the latest drivers from the StarTech.com website (http://www.startech.com/Support). You can find the part number and product ID on the product’s packaging.

Note: Windows will typically save the files to the Downloads folder that is associated with your user account (for example, C:\Users\your_name\Downloads).

Once the download is complete, right-click the zip folder that you downloaded, select Extract All, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Select the appropriate folder for your operating system.

Right-click Setup.exe.

Click Run as Administrator.

Note: If the Run as Administrator option is not available, you might be attempting to run the installer from within the zipped file. Please extract the files using the instructions in Step 2.

Follow the on-screen prompts to install the device drivers and restart the computer when prompted.

Once Windows has restarted, connect the USB video adapter to your computer.

Your computer will automatically complete the driver installation and your device should be ready to use.

Note: Installation may take several seconds to complete. During the installation your display might flicker; this is normal. Once the installation has completed you will see your Windows desktop extended to the additional monitor.

Note: Installation might take several seconds to complete. During the installation your display might flicker; this is normal. Once the installation has completed you will see your Macintosh desktop extended to the additional monitor.

Note: It can take several minutes to complete the installation. During this time, your display might flicker, but this is normal behavior. When the installation is complete, your Ubuntu desktop is extended to the additional monitor.

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How to

In Device Manager, under the appropriate heading, confirm that your expansion card is listed and that there isn't an exclamation mark next to it. For example, a USB controller card would be under Universal Serial Bus controllers.

Your USB device is listed according to the name of the chipset. To determine the name of the chipset of your USB device, navigate to www.StarTech.com and look on the Technical Specifications tab for your product.

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Troubleshooting

DisplayLink powered USB video adapters and docking stations are not compatible with any MacBook running macOS 10.13.4 - 10.13.6. If a system has updated to macOS 10.13.4, 10.13.5, or 10.13.6, upgrading to macOS 10.14 (Mojave) is an option for users to restore DisplayLink functionality.

At this time, the DisplayLink compatibility issue also affects any 2018 MacBook Pro laptops with an Intel Coffee Lake CPU running macOS 10.14. Please see the DisplayLink site for a driver download workaround. This workaround will force AirPlay to extend or mirror one USB display.

For alternative product recommendations including our catalog of Thunderbolt™ products, connect with our Technical Advisory team at the bottom of our Support page.

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When you troubleshoot issues with a USB video adapter, there are some quick tests that you can complete to rule out potential problems. You can test to make sure that the following components are working correctly and are not the source of the issue:

Video cables

Video source

Video destination

USB video adapter

To test your setup components, try the following:

Use the video cables, video source, video destination, and USB video adapter in another setup to see if the problem is with the components or the setup.

Use a different video cable, video source, video destination, and USB video adapter in your setup to see if the problem persists. Ideally, you should test a component that you know works in another setup.

When you test your cables, it is recommended that you do the following:

Test each cable individually.

Use short cables when you are testing.

When you test the video cables, video source, video destination, and USB video adapter, it is recommended that you do the following:

If the device is listed with an error, reinstall the drivers following the instructions on the website.

Check to see if your video card drivers are current. You can check what video card you have in Device Manager under Display adapters. It is recommended that you go directly to the video card manufacturer's website to check for the latest drivers.

Check to see if the monitor is being detected by Windows.

To check to see if Windows is detecting the monitor using a computer that is running a version of Windows XP, do the following:

Right-click on the desktop and click Properties.

Click the Settings tab.

If you see Drag the monitor icons to match the physical arrangement of your monitors, it means that Windows is detecting more than a single monitor. You can click the drop-down menu under Display to see which monitors are detected. This option is not available if Windows only detects a single monitor.

To check to see if Windows is detecting the monitor using a computer that is running a version of Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, do the following:

Right-click on the desktop and click Screen Resolution.

You can click the drop-down menu under Display to see which monitors are detected.

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If hardware acceleration is enabled on any of your software applications, it can result in poor resource management and limit the performance of your video device. If you experience this problem, you should disable hardware acceleration in the program(s) that were impacted.

To disable hardware acceleration in common applications and operating systems, complete one of the following series of steps, depending on what software application(s) or operating system that you are running.

Internet Explorer 9 and later

Note: Earlier versions of Internet Explorer do not use hardware acceleration.

Click the Start button.

Open Control Panel.

Click Network and Internet.

Click Internet Options.

Click the Advanced tab.

Browse to the Accelerated graphics screen.

Select the Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering check box.

Click Apply.

Restart your computer.

Mozilla Firefox

Open Firefox.

Press the Alt key.

Click Toolsand Options.

Click the Advanced icon.

Click the General tab.

Under Browsing, clear the Use hardware acceleration when available check box.

Click the OK button.

Restart your web browser.

Google Chrome

Open Google Chrome.

Click the Options icon (it has three horizontal lines on it).

Click Settings.

Click Show advanced settings.

Scroll to the bottom of the screen and clear the Use hardware acceleration when available check box.

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If the display connected through your USB display adapter does not wake up after your computer has been in extended hibernation, it is likely that Windows has automatically turned off the USB Root hub to save power.

The steps below outline how to configure the USB root hub to stay on during hibernation, to prevent this from happening.

Windows 8 / 10

On your keyboard, press the Windows key + X and select Control Panel.

Click Hardware and Sound, then click Power Options.

Click Change plan settings for the plan you want to change.

Click Change advanced power settings.

Click the plus sign (+) next to “USB settings” and “USB selective suspend setting” to expand the options and change the setting to Disabled.

Click OK to apply the setting.

Note: You may need to disconnect and re-connect your USB display adapter after applying these settings to re-establish the connection.

Windows 7 / Vista

Click the Start button and select Control Panel.

Click Hardware and Sound, then click Power Options.

Click Change plan settings for the plan you want to change.

Click Change advanced power settings.

Click the plus sign (+) next to “USB settings” and “USB selective suspend setting” to expand the options and change the setting to Disabled.

Click OK to apply the setting.

Note: You may need to disconnect and re-connect your USB display adapter after applying these settings to re-establish the connection.

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While the purpose of our USB Video Adapters are to add an additional video output to your laptop or desktop computer, these adapters still require some resources from your internal video card. On a small number of video cards, adding a USB Video Adapter can exceed the limit of available resources, causing one of the connected displays to turn off.

As a possible workaround for this issue, we recommend using a more powerful USB Video Adapter that has a higher amount of integrated RAM, such as our USB32VGAPRO (512MB), USB32DVIPRO (512MB), or USB32HDDVII (1GB).

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A mixture of touchscreen and non-touchscreen displays can cause a conflict with your internal video card. Because of this limitation, touchscreen functions may be disabled when the USB Video Adapter is connected, or the USB Video Adapter may not work at all. Contact the manufacturer of your system to confirm whether your specific model can support a secondary display or not.

All-in-One Computers

Many all-in-one computer systems limit the number of possible monitors to one. This is a limitation in how all-in-one computers are typically manufactured, so adding an external display may not be possible regardless of which USB video adapter is used. Contact the manufacturer of your system to confirm whether your specific model can support a secondary display or not.

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In order for your mouse to move properly between your monitors you must rearrange your monitors in Windows to match the physical location of your monitors on your desk. To do so, complete the following based on your operating system:

Windows 10 and Windows 8

On your keyboard, press the Windows key + X and select Control Panel.

Click Appearance and Personalization, then click Display.

Click the Resolution or Adjust Resolution option from the left column, which will display your monitors as numbered icons.

Click Identify to display the numbers on each connected monitor, showing how the operating system has assigned their positions.

Click and drag the monitor icons to best match your physical setup.

Click OK to apply the changes and close the window.

Windows 7 and Windows Vista

Click the Start button and select Control Panel.

Click Appearance and Personalization, then click Display.

Click the Resolution or Adjust Resolution option from the left column, which will display your monitors as numbered icons.

Click Identify to display the numbers on each connected monitor, showing how the operating system has assigned their positions.

Click and drag the monitor icons to best match your physical setup.

Click OK to apply the changes and close the window.

Windows XP

Click the Start button and select Control Panel.

Double-click Display.

Click the Settings tab, which will display your monitors as numbered icons.

Click Identify to display the numbers on each connected monitor, showing how the operating system has assigned their positions.